


Welcome To Berk

by Hopeful_Puppy



Category: Hiccup Series - Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22898890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hopeful_Puppy/pseuds/Hopeful_Puppy
Summary: To avoid a sticky situation while on a case, Skulduggery and Valkyrie activate a circle of portal runes. Valkyrie finds herself alone in a village of dragons and Vikings, plotting revenge on Skulduggery for putting her in this mess and wondering if she'd be able to fit her own dragon in her uncle Gordon's house...
Kudos: 4





	Welcome To Berk

* * *

When Valkyrie Cain woke from her rather painful transport, she was greeted by two large poisonous green eyes peering curiously at her from a black reptilian head. Giving a small squeak of surprise, Valkyrie scuttled backwards a few metres. Examining the giant reptile that was still staring at her curiously, it’s head tilted to the side giving it a similar appearance to a confused puppy, Valkyrie was about to mark it off as an abnormally big lizard.

Until she saw its wings that were folded neatly against its back. 

“Y-yo-you’re a-a-a,” she gulped a large breath of air to calm herself and her annoying stuttering. Slowly and gracefully, the creature moved toward her, hesitant about her reaction and trying to show the human girl he meant no harm. She raised her hands as if to ward him off, not having enough focus or energy to make a spark or shift the air. Valkyrie was about to close her eyes when the creature pressed his nose flat against her hand. The poisonous eyes still staring at her curiously, it stilled, waiting for her reaction. Feeling the smooth, slightly ridged skin beneath her fingers, Valkyrie couldn’t help but run her hands over it. She inhaled sharply when the creature rumbled, as if purring, and closed its eyes, clearly enjoying her ministrations. Valkyrie released a sigh of relief and awe, and her final word slipped out with it.

_“Dragon.”_

Rustling from the bushes nearby had the human and the dragon jumping to attention, though only one of them relaxed when a gangly fair-haired figure stumbled into view. The two humans stood accessing each other until the boy gave an awkward wave accompanied by an equally awkward;

“Hi...”

“Hi,” was her perplexed reply before;“ Are you a Viking?”

The boy deadpanned and asked sarcastically, “What gave it away?”

Valkyrie narrowed her eyes and replied in an equally sarcastic tone; “You mean aside from what you’re wearing? Oh, I don’t know, could be your fair, gingery hair, or your pale completion or the freckles that stand out on said completion” -she smiled sickeningly sweet before finishing with- “It could even be all three.”

The boy looked at her as if she had spontaneously grown an extra head or two. Glancing at her shoulders just in case, she was relieved to find them free of extra heads. It wasn’t her that was weird; this time it was the other person. Speaking of the other person; “What’s your name?”

“Oh, uh, Hiccup” he stumbled over his answer. He sighed when she raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “My dad has a horrible sense of humour.”

“I gathered that. I’m Valkyrie”

Now it was Hiccup’s turn to stumble in disbelief as he tried to make his way over to his best friend and the new girl.

“Seriously?!”

“My dad was hopeful,” she said, thinking of Skulduggery, as he was the one to inspire the name. “You look a bit,” she paused trying to think of the appropriate word, “scrawny, to be a Viking”.

“Why do you think my dad called me Hiccup?” he sighed.

Valkyrie wanted to point out that he had already mentioned his dad’s bad sense of humour but figured that it was a little bit more complicated and personal than that. As tactless as she could be sometimes, she wasn’t that bad. She was saved from having to openly change the subject, however, when another figure stepped into the clearing after rustling the bushes. The new face was short and stocky with dark hair and a cocky smirk.

“Hiccup, where- why, hello there,” the smirk quickly changed into a leer as the cocky fool saw Valkyrie. “I’m Snotlout, and who might you be Princess?”

Valkyrie closed her eyes and counted to ten, her hand twitching to punch the confident leer off his face all the while. She did not see Hiccup face-palm as Snotlout sent him a triumphant smirk. She also did not see four others enter the grassy clearing, but she did hear them. Before they could say anything and without opening her eyes she stated; “For some reason, you look like more of a Viking to me than he does, Hiccup”.

She could hear Hiccup snort, and then cough to cover anymore of his laughter and a chorus of other badly suppressed sniggers. Opening her eyes she found Snotlout gaping at her and a tall blond girl with clear skin and blue eyes pointing a rather sharp object at her. She raised her hands in the universal sign for ‘I surrender, don’t hurt me’, still not having enough energy to create anything more than a gentle breeze, never mind a spark of flame. _When I get out of this I’m going to take Skulduggery’s best suit and throw it in the Liffey,_ she thought mutinously.

“Hiccup, who is this?” the girl asked suspiciously.

“You know you could just ask me” Valkyrie deadpanned.

“How do I know you won’t lie?”

“Yes, because I’m really going to tell him the truth if I lie to you” Valkyrie pointed out sarcastically. This seemed to make the girl pause in surprise, which gave Valkyrie the perfect chance to introduce herself and make another observation about those around her, like the detective she was being mentored to be.

“I’m Valkyrie and, if I’m honest, the one that fits my definition of Viking the most is him,” she said pointing to a large blond haired boy who was stand off to the side behind two other blondes, a boy and a girl, who were obviously siblings, if not twins.

Hiccup looked at her curiously, doing a very good impression of the dragon behind him, who was staying very quiet as he watched the proceedings. Unlike the dragon, though, Hiccup could speak.

“Why Fishlegs?”

At her raised eyebrows, he sighed; “Don’t ask, it’s a Viking thing.”

Nodding uncertainly, she explained; “Right. Well, he’s blond and pale with rosy cheeks and is big and thick in every sense of those two words. His size is also ever-so-slightly intimidating.”

The twins seemed to find this hilarious, while the girl narrowed her eyes and Snotlout looked bewildered. Hiccup was rubbing his nose to hide his smile and Fishlegs seemed to be worriedly confused. Taking pity on the biggest Viking there, Valkyrie smiled kindly in his direction.

“Take it as a compliment. You’re the one who looks most like a Viking here, in my opinion,” she explained and he gave a shy smile back. She turned back to the girl in front of her, who was still threatening her with the rather sharp object, though it had dropped from it’s original position.

“Can you put that away? Sharp objects and I don’t really mix well,” she asked, conveniently leaving out that it was more the people holding the sharp objects that she didn’t mix with rather than the objects themselves. The blond girl nodded dumbly and lowered her weapon as she stepped back. Seeing that she was still a bit stunned to not be the most Viking-like person there, Hiccup decided to take over and introduce everyone. 

“Uh, Valkyrie, you’ve already met Snotlout, the girl in front of you is Astrid, the twins are Ruffnut and Tuffnut and I already pointed out Fishlegs,” she nodded at each of the names but stopped him as he was about to go on.

“Which one is Ruffnut and which one it Tuffnut?” she asked, eyes focused on the twins. Hiccup was saved from embarrassing himself by saying he didn’t know when they answered for themselves.

“I’m Ruffnut,” the girl answered.

“So, you’re Tuffnut?” Valkyrie clarified, while the boy just gave a challenging grinned in response. She lifted a sceptical eyebrow, unimpressed and muttered; “Right.”

Hiccup cleared his throat and continued before Tuffnut could say anything.

“And this is my best friend and pet, Toothless” he said pointing to the black dragon sitting quietly behind him, who was watching Valkyrie carefully, curious as to why she smelled of fire and air like many of his species.

Valkyrie admired the sleek dragon ignoring his intense gaze and the comment on him being Hiccup’s best friend. It’s not as if she could say anything without being a hypocrite. Her best friend was a skeleton who was over four hundred years old, for Pete’s sake!

“Toothless?” she questioned with doubt. Hiccup just grinned happily.

“Toothless, do you mind showing Valkyrie what I mean?” he asked the dragon still grinning. The dragon gave his own gummy grin in response. Valkyrie blinked.

“Oh.”

Then two rows of rather sharp, wicked looking teeth popped from the dragon’s gums making his happy grin look a little bit more sinister. Valkyrie flinched and stepped back amazed.

“Woah,” she exclaimed, “that’s awesome! And he’s your pet?”

“Yep, we all have a dragon for a pet” Snotlout explained smugly, in another attempt to impress the new mystery girl. Astrid punched him in the arm for giving away the information, but Valkyrie wasn’t paying any attention. She was wondering what it would take to get a dragon like Toothless to come home with her and how to get her parents to agree to let her keep it. Maybe she could leave it at Gordon’s house.

The bushes rustled again and Valkyrie wondered why she couldn’t have fallen to earth, or wherever she was, in a slightly less commuted area. Her eyes widened in surprise however when she saw the next Viking to come out of the woodwork. He looked to be around six feet tall but he had a hook instead of a hand on one arm and one of his shins had been replaced with a peg leg.

“Ah! There you all are! Who’s this? Never mind, tell me later. Stoick’s looking for you. He wants to know if you’ve found the thing that fell from the sky. Well, come on. You too, young lass, Stoick’ll probably want a word with ya.”

He promptly turned away and started walking back the way he came, leaving Valkyrie to blink at his retreating back and the others to roll their eyes at the orders. Grumbling as they went they followed the elder Viking back to the village, with Valkyrie, Hiccup and Toothless bringing up the rear, talking as they walked.

“So does Gobber look like a Viking to you?” Hiccup asked with a grin while still being honestly curious.

“Kind of. He looks more like a pirate to me, to be honest.”

Hiccup, Ruffnut and Astrid, who were walking in front of the trio gave Valkyrie perplexed looks. She would later deny that she huffed.

“What? He’s got a hook and a peg leg. What am I supposed to think?”

Ignoring the question, Ruffnut quickly changed the subject.

“So is your name really Valkyrie?” she asked amazed.

“Yeah. My dad hoped I’d live up to the name,” she explained again, thinking about how many ways she could get back at Skulduggery for putting her in this situation alone. She didn’t miss Gobber’s comment on looking for something that fell from the sky. While she didn’t fall far enough to do any serious damage, thanks to Ghastly’s tailoring, she had a funny feeling it was her that they were looking for.

“So, how’d you end up in that clearing Valkyrie?” Astrid asked, still suspicious of the mysterious girl. Valkyrie winced, and cursed her luck. _Well, they do say honesty is the best policy,_ she thought.

“I fell” she replied casually, turning to Toothless and rubbing his head. She blatantly ignored Astrid’s narrowed eyes and Ruffnut and Hiccup’s incredulous stares.

“You fell?” Astrid asked haltingly in disbelief.

“Yeah, it was only around twenty feet” she stated still clinging to casualty.

“Twenty feet?!” Hiccup exclaimed, while Astrid and Ruffnut looked confused, “You mean that was you?”

“That was me what?” Valkyrie asked, being deliberately dense.

“You’re the thing we saw fall from the sky?” Astrid and Ruffnut gaped in surprise.

“Hey, I resent that! I’m a person, not a thing” Valkyrie argued, throwing caution into the wind.

“So it was you! How’d you survive?” Hiccup asked excitedly, his creative mind racing with the possibilities of future safety features he could add to his flying gear.

“Good tailoring, and before you ask I have no idea how it’s made and no you may not borrow my clothes to examine them.”

Hiccup sighed dejectedly, while Astrid and Ruffnut looked at Valkyrie’s unusual clothes with a new respect. Valkyrie continued to rub Toothless’s head as they walked to the rest of the way to the village, taking a strange comfort from his rumbling purrs.

A huge man with a long bristling rusty-coloured beard and piercing blue eyes stopped them just outside the village. His colouring was reminiscent of Hiccup but Valkyrie was completely thrown off by his size.

“Is that your dad?” she whispered to Hiccup, just to be sure.

“Yep, that’s him. Stoick the Vast and Chief of our village” he explained dryly.

“Wait, your the Chief’s son?” she asked, not entirely sure if that was a good thing for her or not.

“That he is, lass, and a better son I could not ask for,” Stoick grunted though his eyes dared Valkyrie to claim otherwise. Valkyrie’s cheeks went a pale pink hue as she suppressed her embarrassment while Hiccup wore a small smile of pride. When Stoick turned to Gobber for information and while the other teens were talking amongst themselves, Valkyrie whispered to Hiccup,

“He looks angry at me. What did I do?”

“It’s not you. He’s looked angry since the day I was born, but I’m sure there’s no connection*,” Hiccup snarked quietly.

Valkyrie snorted at his dry humour, but commented wryly, “He seems pretty proud of you for there to be a connection.”

“That’s a recent thing.”

Valkyrie wisely chose to drop the subject when Stoick turned his attention back to the teens, more specifically Hiccup and Valkyrie.

“Are you going to introduce me to your new friend, Hiccup?” Stoick asked in a dangerous voice. It was a command mix with the hint of a threat, but Valkyrie couldn’t figure out for the life of her who he was threatening, Hiccup or her. Hiccup on the other hand seemed used to it, but was still careful as he introduced her to his father.

“Dad, this is Valkyrie,” Stoick and Gobber’s eyes widened at the name, “and she the one we saw fall from the sky.”

Except for Hiccup, Astrid, Ruffnut and Valkyrie, everyone within hearing distance gasped in disbelief. Valkyrie could feel their eyes look over her for any proof of her claim that she truly did fall from the sky. Knowing they wouldn’t find any, her stomach dropped slightly. Stoick’s eyes turned to her and pinned her where she stood.

“And how did that happen?” he asked, his tone daring her to lie to him. Hiccup looked like he was about to say something but Valkyrie thought she might as well get the interrogation over with.

“It was an accident. I was helping my mentor study some runes we found but we must have activated them somehow and I got sucked into a portal. I don’t know if my mentor followed me through at the same time or not. Hell, I don’t even know where I am at the moment!” she admitted in a small rush. It was mostly the truth, but she’d be damned if she was going to explain to them that she had been on a case at the time and opening the portal was the only way to get out of a sticky situation. Stoick’s eyes seemed to soften, if only slightly, at her confession.

“You are in Berk, just outside the village of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe” he explained.

Valkyrie’s expression varied between dubious and worried. She’s never heard of Berk as far as she could re-call and she was sure she’d never heard of the tribe either. Its name was the kind of ridiculous that you just don’t forget. _Toto, we are so not in Kansas anymore,_ she thought.

“I’m a long way from home” was what she said, knowing they wouldn’t get the reference.

A wheezing, garbled laugh drew the group attention to an old and crotchety old man who was standing in the shadows of one of the huts nearest them. As he stepped into the light, the arrogant glint in his eye, his ugly physical features and the self-righteous air that surrounded him became visible. Valkyrie felt a sudden, pressing and near physical need to break his nose. Painfully. Perhaps even twice.

“That’s the biggest load of yak dung I’ve ever heard! While I agree that this, _girl_ ” he sneered the word in distaste, “could be stupid enough to get lost, it’s obvious she’s here to infiltrate the village and cause trouble. And to think, these kids all lapped up her story like some wondrous fairy tale. Ha! I mean, look at her!”

The man had barely even started talking before Valkyrie’s eyebrow was twitching madly in frustration. So much so, that Hiccup had noticed and taken a sizable step away from her. The old man continued on regardless.

“Look at the things she’s wearing. Some fancy cuddly material that will break at the first sign of hard work. She’s obviously some kind of thief or witch with all of that black.”

“Mildew” Stoick warned. Even he could see Valkyrie’s rising ire at this point. Unfortunately, Mildew wasn’t listening. In fact he’d stepped closer and reached out a bony hand to grab her coat.

“If I just-”

He didn’t even get within an inch of her. Lightning fast, Valkyrie grabbed the wrist of the hand reaching for her and twisted it away from his body sharply, making him fall to his knees. She then ripped away the staff that was in the other hand and pressed the bottom of it into his withered chest. Twisting his arm towards her and pushing him away by the end of his staff, Valkyrie made sure to have a painfully tight grip on the things she was holding in her hands.

“Try and touch me again and I promise to enjoy breaking more than just your wrist,” she hissed, “It’s one thing to insult me. I can easily brush off the ramblings of a demented old goat but I’d rather not have your stupidity spreading to me. I’m going to have to wash my hands when I’m through with you to make sure I’m not infected with it.”

A small huff of laughter made her look up at the group surrounding her. There were a variety of looks, ranging from amused to impressed and shocked to worried. However, everyone’s attention was focused solely on her and her captive.

“What? It’s not like I’m maiming him or anything. I’m just putting him in a small amount of pain,” she defended, before turning her attention back to the fool in her clutches.

“Now, what are we not going to do in future?”

He hissed in pain and fury and spit in her direction. She twisted his wrist harder.

“What was that?”

“I’m not going to insult you-”

“Open your mouth or even breath in my presence ever again, you mean.”

“Yes! Yes! Alright, just let me go!”

“Alright, but I’m warning you now,” -she looked him straight in the eyes- “you do and I will shove my foot so far up your ass, the Gods will feel it.”

While the people of Berk believed she was speaking of the Norse Gods like Thor and Odin, Valkyrie took quiet and sadistic pleasure in the image of the Faceless Ones feeling the pain of her swift rear kick. The fear in the wretched man’s eyes told Valkyrie that the grin she was sporting was probably a little bit demented or far too sugary sweet. She hoped it was the latter. She was having enough problems with Darquesse as it was. Everyone winced as she dropped his staff and let him go. Grabbing his staff and stumbling to his feet, he quickly shuffled off. Hiccup face palmed.

“Yes, that’s a great first impression to give the Chief. Threatening one of his villagers,” he muttered.

“He started it. Besides, it’s better that I stand up for myself than let him walk all over me. I’m a visitor, not a prisoner,” Valkyrie sniffed in response, channelling her posh Dubliner side.

Hiccup could do nothing but sigh, while Stoick laughed loudly.

“You’ve got spirit lass, I’ll give you that” he boomed.

“Why thank you, Chief Stoick sir. I do try” Valkyrie smiled sweetly, clasping her hands innocently behind her back. Hiccup rolled his eyes at her tone but smiled as they walked into the village.

“Welcome to Berk,” he told her cheerfully, happy with his father’s approval. 

As they walked through the village towards the Chief’s home, Valkyrie glanced around warily as every single dragon in the vicinity watched her with intense and focused eyes. She discreetly moved closer to Hiccup and Toothless, who growled at the other dragons in warning. Ignoring Hiccup’s curious eyes, Valkyrie hoped that Skulduggery would find her soon. She knew she was well out of her depth right now.

Welcome to Berk indeed. 

**Author's Note:**

> *Hiccup says this beautifully sarcastic line in the series, I believe.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
